Approaches to Teaching Boccaccio's DecameronEditor(s): James H. McGregor
Pages: ix & 207 pp.
Published: 2000
ISBN: 9780873527613
"The need for this volume is obvious. The Decameron has arrived. It is now widely read and studied in all kinds of undergraduate courses, and it is an ideal text to study the techniques of fiction, the ways in which texts influence or echo other texts (as well as interact with other artistic media), and the vexing questions of gender."

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"What separates the Decameron from most of the canon is that it is fun to read," says the editor in his preface to this volume. "Though its narrators sometimes weep, they laugh much more often." Boccaccio's highly teachable work is easily excerpted, and the essays in this collection describe stimulating ways to introduce these tales to undergraduates.

Table of Contents

Approaches to Teaching Boccaccio's Decameron

Part 1: MaterialsJames H. McGregor

Editions and Translations

Required and Recommended Reading for Undergraduates

The Instructor's Library

Reference Works
Biographies and Background Works
Critical Studies
Collection of Essays
Articles

Audiovisual and Electronic Resources

Part 2: Approaches

Introduction: The Decameron in the Classroom

Teaching the Decameron in Its Traditions
Narrative in the Decameron and the Thousand and One NightsBonnie D. Irwin

Non-Christian People and Spaces in the DecameronJanet Levarie Smarr

Boccaccio's Hidden Debt to DanteRobert Hollander

The Decameron's Secular DesignsJulia Reinhard Lupton

Patterns of Meaning in the DecameronMichael Papio

Teaching the Decameron in a Historical ContextSteven M. Grossvogel

Reflections on the Criticism of the DecameronGiuseppe Mazzotta

Gender and Sexuality in the Decameron

Women in the DecameronF. Regina Psaki

Medieval Fantasies: Other Worlds and the Role of the Other in the DecameronMarga Cottino-Jones